Classic movie aficionados lucky enough to both be within a close distance of San Francisco and have some dough-re-me on hand to spend will get quite the treat when the San Francisco Silent Film Festival hits the Castro Theatre from May 6-10.
Returning to the big screen from 100+ years ago ready to rock the house - silent movies at their operatic best, accompanied quite literally by a symphony orchestra. San Francisco's 29th Silent Film Festival will return to the hallowed "movie palace" aisles of the Castro Theatre after presenting at the Orinda Theatre in 2025.
This Wednesday evening the San Francisco Silent Film Festival returns in high style with Erich von Stroheim's wonderfully indulgent epic QUEEN KELLY (1929), starring Gloria Swanson at her unapologetically over-the-top best, with musical accompaniment by composer Eli Denson conducting the San Francisco Conservatory of Music Orchestra.
Among the international lineup of cool classic movies at the 29th San Francisco Silent Film Festival: King Vidor's innovative THE CROWD
The last film of F.W. Murnau, his collaboration with documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, TABU: A STORY OF THE SOUTH SEAS
Also on the 29th SFSFF bill: William Wyler's western BLAZING DAYS, Abram Room's time capsule tale of life in 1927 Russia BED AND SOFA, the 1926 "Lubitsch touch" charmer and Roaring Twenties piece SO THIS IS PARIS
And. . . William de Mille's MISS LULU BETT, the British sci-fi flick HIGH TREASON, Carl Dreyer's 1922 film LOVE ONE ANOTHER and two "city symphony" pieces from Nice and Paris, Á PROPOS DE NICE (co-directed by Jean Vigo and Boris Kaufman) and RIEN QUE LES HEURES, directed by Alberto Cavalcanti.
Matinee idol star power will be provided by the aforementioned Gloria Swanson, director/actor Harry Piel, a pre-Josef Von Sternberg Marlene Dietrich, megawatt It Girl Clara Bow in HULA, an early appearance by the great Myrna Loy and THE CAVEMAN, a witty farce featuring the tragic albeit wonderful comic character actress Marie Prevost.
Our pals Stan Laurel & Oliver Hardy will headline the Saturday morning show.
Animation, this blog's favorite cinematic genre, will be represented by the Japanese Paper Film Project. The Bucknell University-based initiative worked with Japanese museums, film archives, and individual collectors to digitize and preserve more than 200 films, in this program early animated works made on paper, not celluloid.
Chicago film preservationist Kyle Westphal adds, “the project has successfully recovered the world of lost paper print movies made expressly to be exhibited on home projectors manufactured by Osaka’s Katei Toki and Tokyo’s REFCY and Tsukiboshi firms from 1932 to 1938. With the Japanese animation industry facing hard times, these firms bypassed theaters and took their wares directly to consumers."
The free AMAZING TALES FROM THE ARCHIVES program will be back to highlight film preservationists and the great work of film archives around the world. Presenting: Kyle Westphal of the Chicago Film Society, the
Danish Film Institute’s Thomas Christensen, Filmmuseum Düsseldorf's Andreas Thein and Carlo Chatrian of the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Turin.
Spectacular silent movies in big screen glory are never (in 1926 or 2026) actually silent, so the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presentations feature a wide array of terrific accompanists, including the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Duo Yumeno, Stephen Horne, Mas Koga, Guenter Buchwald, Frank Bockius and Wayne Barker.
The official San Francisco Silent Film Festival press release adds:
Germany’s Weimar period was one of the most vibrant and influential moments in cinema history. Stretching from the end of WWI until the Nazi takeover, Weimar films were at the forefront of stylistic and technical innovations and created narratives that underpin film genres like horror, film noir, and sci-fi to this day.
Our friends at WeimarCinema.org write, “[Weimar] is also shorthand for all things modern, not only in its promotion of gender equality and sexual emancipation, but also in its spirit of experimentation in the arts.
Weimar is still associated with urban modernity and the ever-present dangers of a backlash. Whatever the final verdict, Weimar's tumultuous 14-year period is one of the richest and most consequential in modern history."
We are excited to present four very different, very rare, Weimar titles at this year’s festival, all in beautiful new restorations, all with live musical accompaniment!
Deutsches Filminstitut’s restoration of SENSATION IM WINTERGARTEN demonstrates Max Green’s gorgeous camerawork featuring Berlin’s fabulous Wintergarten (it didn’t survive WWII) and other Berlin locations. This rousing melodrama about a world-famous trapeze artist stars Austrian actor Paul Richter who played Siegfried in Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen.
Proof that film restoration can be as exciting, with as much down-to-the-wire pacing as modern film production, Filmmuseum Düsseldorf just found additional material to add to their superb restoration of HIS GREATEST BLUFF and archivist Andreas Thein is working round the clock to prepare the film for its closeup at the festival.
We’re pleased to introduce San Francisco audiences to a major star of the Weimar period who is virtually unknown today, actor/director Harry Piel. Piel’s action films were huge box office draws—this one involves priceless jewels, slick-haired crooks, and Piel in dual roles as twin brothers! And a star turn by Marlene Dietrich in one of her earliest screen appearances.
Danish director Carl Th. Dreyer, known for his silent-era masterpieces The Passion of Joan of Arc and Vampyr among others, travelled to Germany to make LOVE ONE ANOTHER in 1922. Based on a best-selling Danish novel, the film is set during the Russian revolution of 1905, a time of massive anti-Jewish violence. We are grateful to the Danish Film Institute for restoring this rarity and returning Dreyer’s moving depiction of anti-Semitism’s sinister harms to the world.
BOOKKEEPER KREMKE is the story of vainglorious payroll clerk (Hermann Vallentin) who loses his job to automation in a Germany plagued by inflation and unemployment. Ukrainian-born Anna Sten has her German film debut as his daughter Lene. This was director Marie Harder’s only narrative film, and it is a vivid portrait of its time. Harder, who was a Social Democrat went to Mexico after the Nazis banned the party and died in a plane crash near Popocatépetl in 1936. Thanks to the Deutsche Kinemathek for this dazzling restoration.
Imogen Sara Smith writes in our program book, “Watching films from the late Weimar era is both poignant and suspenseful, like watching people skate on thin ice in the last rays of sun before an approaching storm front.” There are parallels to our own time.
SFSFF's Festival 2025 begins with Chaplin's The Gold Rush on Wednesday evening and closes with Buster Keaton in Go West.
In between, there will be, among numerous cool classic movies, the 1926 version of Beau Geste, starring Ronald Colman and (as a bad guy) William Powell, three Sherlock Holmes adaptations, The Unknown (1927), co-starring the ridiculously talented "man of 1000 faces" Lon Chaney Sr. with a very young Joan Crawford (that's right, Joanie was young once, way back in the halcyon days of silent pictures and her 1928 box-office smash OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS) and the always excellent Amazing Tales From The Archives.
There will also be a morning Fleischer Studio cartoon show featuring Ko-Ko the Clown in Jumping Beans, It’s the Cats, KoKo at the Circus, KoKo in 1999, KoKo’s Kane, KoKo’s Klock, KoKo’s Kink and KoKo’s Earth Control.
While it will be more than a bit odd to not go to San Francisco's Castro Theatre to see silent movies on the big screen, the Orinda Theater is a very cool venue. Shows by both the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the Psychotronix Film Festival have been presented there.
This shall be
the 33rd anniversary KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival and grace the hallowed halls of Room 5015 of Foothill College in the lovely Los Altos Hills.
No doubt the show shall feature the great Joi Lansing and Scopitones will be ready to roll to entertain audiences once again!
Will have more about the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival when December begins and hope hope hope there will be NO problems forthcoming with my passport or the NY-SF flight that will get yours truly to his former stomping grounds, the San Francisco Bay Area.
The past year has had at least one prominent thing going for it: the full-fledged return of film festivals after an extended lockdown-related hiatus. The 2024 version of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival opened earlier this week at the Palace Of Fine Arts Theatre, in San Francisco's Marina district. Do we seek a Star Trek teleportation device that would make attending these screenings a breeze? Yes.
The Laurel & Hardy Show - Saturday, April 13 at 10:00 a.m.
Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr - Saturday, April 13 at 7:00 p.m. The Gorilla 1927 version starring Charlie Murray - Sunday, April 14 at 10:00 a.m.
Harold Lloyd in The Kid Brother - Sunday, April 14 at 12:15 p.m. Live music by Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra.
Sunday, April 14, 2024 at 3:00 p.m. Roxy Cinema NYC, 2 Avenue of the Americas (lower level) and Cartoons On Film presents Peculiar Puppets vol. V (16mm) The press release elaborates: Roxy Cinema hereby presents a fifth retrospective screening featuring various peculiar examples of puppet films from the 1920s through the 1950s. Warning: You may find some of the offerings to be rather unsettling, possibly even creepy!
This event is programmed by early animation archivist and historian Tommy José Stathes, and prints are hand-selected from his personal 16mm film archive. The 90 minute film program with intermission will be followed by a live Q&A session with Stathes. Click here for more info & advance tickets.
On April 18-21, 2024, TCM Classic Film Festival returns to the Holly-woods. Venues include the Egyptian Theatre, the Chinese Multiplex House 1-6, and, of course, Club TCM at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. It is the 15th edition of this epic festival and features lots and lots of classic movies along with more recent fare which, by this point, April 2024, were definitely long time ago. . . make that a very long time ago. Many special guests, still living movie stars and various favorite scholars and historians we know will be on hand. Still miss Robert Osborne! For way more on past TCM festivals, check out the TCM YouTube channel.
Still thinking of the late, great Joe Flaherty, who did excellent William F. Buckley and Kirk Douglas impersonations and whose fellow SCTV cast members were also incredible mimics, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog now turns to the topic of impressionists. Rang in 2024 on the blog with a January 1 post largely devoted to old school impressionists - John Byner, Bobby Darin, Sammy Davis Jr and Australia's best, Keith Scott, included.
Those of us who have long since passed retirement age, such as this "ok, boomer" blogmeister, remember seeing impressionists regularly on TV. Such popular and ubiquitous stand-up comedians of the day - Jack Carter, Shecky Greene, Guy Marks - featured impersonations prominently in their acts.
The Ed Sullivan Show, The Hollywood Palace, The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson and The Dean Martin Show featured superlative impressionists.
Way back in the 1950s and 1960s, it hadnt been that long since arger-than-life movie stars - Humphrey Bogart, Mae West, W.C. Fields, Jack Benny, Greta Garbo, Edward G. Robinson, Peter Lorre, Jimmy Cagney, Groucho Marx, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Robert Mitchum - dominated both the silver screen and the cathode ray tube. Many of the aforementioned Hollywood stars were very much still with us then and could either love or despise the impressions. Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett would book the likes of Jack Benny and Groucho Marx on their late-night shows whenever they could.
Along with The Ed Sullivan Show and The Dean Martin Show, it was arguably the last TV variety program to provide mimics a showcase. The late 1970's On Location series by HBO did at least gave impressionists an extended opportunity to do their standup comedy acts.
And, speaking of The Dean Martin Show, how this blogmeister actually forgot to include the aforementioned Guy Marks (1923-1987), one of the very best and funniest of the old school impressionists back in the 1960's, we'll never know! Let's rectify that error now!
Since the demise of the TV variety program and such showcases as The Ed Sullivan Show in the 1970's, the last place where actual impressionists could be found is late night TV: SCTV (a.k.a. Second City Television), Late Night With David Letterman, Saturday Night Live and to a lesser degree Fridays, In Living Color and Mad TV. Frank Caliendo was the impressions guy on Mad TV.
Saturday Night Live has explored that "improv meets impressions" space from John Belushi's Marlon Brando as The Godfather impersonation to Gilda Radner's Lucy to the dead-on mimicry and comedy acting genius of Eddie Murphy, uncrowned and unheralded king of celebrity and politician voices Darrell Hammond - and the "micro-impressions" of the great Dana Carvey.
The Saturday Night Live casts have featured numerous stand-up comedians who do impressions over the decades - the infamous Season 6 featured three, Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo and Gilbert Gottfried - and a favorite 21st century SNL stalwart and new school impressionist is Bill Hader.
Sometimes Jimmy Fallon's musical impressions make it into The Tonight Show; we would also occasionally get a glimpse of them, along with very funny music-related sketches, during his SNL stint in the early oughts. He's a musician who happens to be an improv comic and clearly most at home with a guitar in his hand. Jimmy Fallon's impressions of Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen are my favorite bits of his.
Fellow SNL alum Melissa Villaseñor is also an amazing new school impressionist.
As is the case with Maya Rudolph, we have the impression that Melissa Villaseñor has many, many more impressions yet to be heard.
Melissa's celebrity impersonations (musical and otherwise) are a highlight of the current version of The Tonight Show, especially the Wheel of Musical Impressions feature. Now, has anyone gotten Melissa and Dolly Parton together?
The current SNL cast features two bonafide impressionists in James Austin Johnson and Chloe Fineman.
While eating a delicious sandwich on National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day and checking Ebay daily for Star Trek teleportation devices in good condition (even knowing it's likely that Bill Shatner and Patrick Stewart have cornered the market on them), the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog also yearn to see more showcases for comedians and comediennes with the gift of mimicry - and the gift of gab.
The 26th San Francisco Silent Film Festival opens on July 12 and extends through July 16!
Having enjoyed a slew of amazing S.F. Silent Film Festival shows at San Francisco's Castro Theatre over the decades, we're more than a tad sad to be missing this year's extravaganza, but happy to plug it nonetheless.
In the sequel to The Three Musketeers (1921), Fairbanks plays D'Artagnan with his customary savoir faire, wit and panache. Accompanying the action classic: The Guenter Buchwald Ensemble, with Buchwald on piano and violin, Masaru Koga on saxophone, and Frank Bockius on percussion. Jeffrey Vance, author of Douglas Fairbanks, will introduce the program.
The SFSFF press release adds: Fairbanks reprised the role for the sequel and oversaw every element of the lavish production. It was his last silent film and a magnificent success — with a little special treat thrown into the mix: In a concession to the new sound craze, the great silent star recorded two sequences in which D'Artagnan speaks directly to the audience.
It was also for all practical purposes the end of Fairbanks' illustrious silver screen career. Fairbanks starred in a few talkies, notably Mr. Robinson Crusoe (1932) and The Private Life Of Don Juan (1934), but would never be that epic, larger-than-life figure onscreen again.
The 2023 San Francisco Silent Film Festival includes, in one of its customary compendiums of silent movie goodness, numerous gems, many produced in the mid to late 1920's.
Along with action hero Douglas Fairbanks in the 2023 San Francisco Silent Film Festival lineup will be great movie comedians, including the always intrepid Buster Keaton in The 3 Ages.
There will also be essential late 1920's slapstick by our favorite comedy team, Laurel & Hardy, and very funny silent films starring character actor supreme (and future Fractured Fairy Tales narrator) Edward Everett Horton. The comedy-crazed silent movie buffs at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog approve!
In 1928, Edward Everett Horton starred in a series of 2-reel comedies produced for Paramount Pictures by Harold Lloyd's company, Hollywood Productions. Not surprisingly, Horton is incredibly funny in these silents. It is easy to imagine the mutterings of Horton's persnickety character, as we know him from such sound films as The Gang's All Here.
The Edward E. Horton Show presents three of Horton's two-reelers, mastered from Library of Congress 35mm prints: No Publicity (1927, d. N.T. Barrows, 22 m.), Horse Shy (1928, d. Jay A. Howe, 22 m.) and Vacation Waves (1928, d. N.T. Barrows, 22 m.)
This release, which led to a 2-DVD set, was the result of a successful Kickstarter, which we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog were delighted to contribute to. The rest of the Edward Everett Horton series can be purchased here.
If you happen to be in the Bay Area next weekend, by all means get to the Castro Theatre for vintage big screen fun.
Much of this blog over the past 15+ years has been devoted to plugging screenings. Love classic movies, so am quite pleased to finish 2022 going to actual public screenings. Movie events we love in Northern California and have promoted repeatedly here: silent movies at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum, the Psychotronix Film Festival, Noir City and San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The Psychotronix shows, at Foothill College and the Orinda Theatre, express a love of film humor, intentional and unintentional, in all its forms
After experiencing an extended period that included a year of lockdown and NO SCREENINGS, ZERO, NONE (!!!) for way too long, it boggles the mind that there are actually two classic film events in one geographic area on the same day.
Next Saturday A Day Of Silents plays the Castro Theatre while the Psychotronix Film Festival presents its 2022 Christmas show at the Orinda Theatre. Here’s a cool trailer promoting the latter. . .
Now, in all honesty, the guy who writes this blog co-founded the KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival with Sci Fi Bob Ekman and KFJC’s intrepid movie soundtrack expert Robert Emmett back in 1992.
Bob Wilkins/Creature Features historian and publisher of Planet X magazine Scott Moon of Cinema Insomnia joined the merry band of psychotronic 16mm purveyors in 1997.
After yours truly moved to upstate New York, Sci Fi Bob and Scott have carried on and continue to carry on the Psychotronix spirit and brand with a series of shows at the Orinda Theatre, beginning in 2016.
I'm very proud of the work I did with Sci Fi Bob and Scott, both talented, knowledgeable, resourceful and inspired film collector/curator/programmers.
We shall return to Foothill College for the 30th Anniversary KFJC Psychotronix Film Festival on December 10!
Also on December 3, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents A Day Of Silents at San Francisco's Castro Theatre.
There will be tributes to Sessue Hayakawa in The Cheat, Anna May Wong in The Toll Of The Sea, and the new SFSFF/Cinématheque Française restoration of the 1921 film Pour Don Carlos starring Parisian producer-director-scriptwriter-actress Musidora.
Hands-down, our favorite from A Day Of Silents is Marion Davies and William Haines in King Vidor's Show People.
If you are a blog reader geographically in the greater San Francisco Bay Area on December 3, we suggest doing both events - first checking out the early shows of A Day Of Silents.
And then, it's time to head for the Orinda Theatre to see the Christmas Psychotronix.
In closing, we note that the excellent Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum has re-opened and is doing programs every other Saturday at the Edison Theater!
